So in my "new guy post" I decided (after awesome help from you guys) to do my head gaskets. Pretty good coolant leak from both sides at rear of engine.

So I'm tearing this down and lubing up various bolts and nuts to help with breaking them loose and upon close inspection I realize my heads (which I was pretty sure had been re-gasketed before) have ARP studs in them.
I've attached pics just to get some verification from the community.

So, I haven't gotten the bottom intake off yet but maybe I'll get lucky and it's just a coolant leak from there and not the HG's OR it's still the gaskets and could verify if ARP studs work well in our application OR it was just a crappy job.

I'll keep you posted...and please let me know if I am seeing this correctly and those are studs in the head.

Oh, and I haven't removed any heat shields as I've seen in the instructions for this job, I can only assume they were not put back in from a previous owner. Is that an issue?

Thanks all.

 

well they say ARP right on it... so im not sure why you need us to tell you that they ARP studs...

 

Easy does it Clay.
For some reason I thought this forum was to help people, screw off mate.

 

I had a lower intake gasket leak, dripped off the back of the engine. Pretty substantial leak. I would've done a compression test before buying all the parts for HG. Hopefully it's just the valley gasket. Just remember to use the right o rings for heater core and coolant out from the block. I used the wrong ones and had to do a half tear down to replace.

 

Verification: YES, those are ARP Studs! Nice find.

 

To answer your other question I disnt have any heat shield issues. There is (or should be) one protecting the brake master cylinder but I was able to work around without completely removing it.

 

An update on my HG project where I found ARP studs already installed from previous owner.
The rocker cover bolts were all but loose.
The lower intake bolts were barely cranked down, were easily turned loose.
ARP stud bolts on drivers side barely cranked down either, very easily turned. Haven't done passenger side yet.
At first I was thinking of just re-torquing the head stud bolts down and calling it a day but with the other bolts as loose as they were I'm still going forward with everything.

More to come...

 

Head studs could be loose because the threads gave way. Inspect that hole and mark it so when re torquing you can be aware of that as a possible problem.

 

I've read threads on here about people torqueing the ARP studs to ARP specs and pulling the threads out of the block not realizing the torque values are for steel, not aluminum head/engine block combos.

 

I'll check for threads being pulled, thanks guys. I'll be going to 60ft lbs assuming all else is good. From all the other threads I've read on the subject on several different forums that's the magic number for our engine/heads.